


white noise.

by corpsefaking



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Implied Dale Cooper/Harry Truman (Twin Peaks), Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29764770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corpsefaking/pseuds/corpsefaking
Summary: He's nine when he's finally taken out hunting with Mom and Dad and Frank. He's not allowed a gun (but Frank is and he's only eleven), but he watches and admires how steady Mom and Dad are even if he's kind of sad about the birds flying away.-or Sheriff Harry Truman’s Life Ages 0-28 The Summary in 2.2k Words
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	white noise.

**Author's Note:**

> the way i have several longer works in progress that have plot and would be enjoyable for more people to read and that im excited about but instead i write 2k words of summarizing harrys life in a day :| anyways, this is a little messy but i like the ending so  
> content warning for a not very good home life? i hesitate to say its abusive but its definitely not good

From the moment Harry Truman is born, he is surrounded by noise.

There’s always something, whether it be the dogs (a golden retriever and two bloodhounds), his brother or his parents. Everyone seems to have only loud hobbies – Frank plays just about every sport under the sun, Mom plays her music so loud it hurts if you get too close, Dad does both and they all always seem to be yelling things across the house or the yard.

Harry doesn’t find out that people aren’t always so loud until he’s five and starts school. He’s always been a lot quieter than his family and the classroom’s a nice change of pace, even if the playground, cafeteria and bus are all just as loud, if not louder than his house.

He hadn't realized things could be so quiet because even at night his house is noisy. It's the dogs and Dad's yelling and the animals outside and the radio Mom needs on to sleep.

Harry doesn't make any friends at school. The other kids like him well enough and he likes them, but he always seems to be a second choice to about half the class, so he guesses he isn't really a second choice. But it's fine because he doesn't always want to play with the others, so he's perfectly fine sitting on one of the school playground's rusty swings until someone asks him to join their game of football (but it's not _really_ football, just something kinda like it) during recess.

Two of the dogs die in July, when Harry’s eight. The bloodhound was old, so it isn’t a surprise to anyone but Harry, who couldn’t imagine that stubborn old dog dying. Frank seems just as upset as him, though. It’s a real surprise when Mr Barker from down the street tells them that their golden retriever’s been hit only a week and a half later.

They get two more dogs, a greyhound and another retriever, and then another bloodhound when they have to put down theirs. Harry loves the new dogs as much as the old ones, but he can’t help feeling a little like he’s betraying them by playing with these new ones.

He's nine when he's finally taken out hunting with Mom and Dad and Frank. He's not allowed a gun (but Frank is and he's only eleven), but he watches and admires how steady Mom and Dad are even if he's kind of sad about the birds flying away.

They always have a good dinner after they've gone hunting, but Dad's always irritable afterwards. He tries to ask Mom why, but she just says it's because it makes him think. Harry's pretty sure Dad's usually thinking things, though, so it doesn't make much sense to him.

Harry's eleven when he realizes that, maybe, Moms and Dads aren't supposed to yell at each other the way his Mom and Dad do sometimes. The way they get so loud and Mom balls her fists up so tight she starts shaking. The first hint is that Frank says, "Shit, why can't they act normal for once?" one day when he and a friend are playing with a ball out back and letting Harry tag along. The second hint is that the friend frowns and says, "Come on, let's go to my place," and Harry ends up being included in the _let's_ which _never_ happens.

The third hint is when he's trying to study the list of states and their capitals because he's got a quiz on them tomorrow and he thinks to ask for some help because, really, how is he supposed to remember all this? So he goes out to the living room only to find himself right in the middle of Mom and Dad cursing and spitting at each other. He can't even tell what they're saying, but it's frightening and all he can think to do is high-tail it out of there. He sits outside, staring at his list of state capitals until past the point when the sun's set and he can barely see, all the way until Mom calls him in to ask him if he's eaten yet before sending him to bed.

The first time Harry shoots something while out hunting, he’s surprised about how bad he feels after. He’s known the realities of hunting his whole life, even helped Dad skin some, but there’s this gross feeling that lives in his gut, growing and growing until Dad starts congratulating him over dinner and he has to leave before any of them sees him cry.

Mom ends up seeing him anyways, or maybe it’s just some sort of special Mom-sense that she knows when he or Frank is upset like that. She hugs him and pulls him up onto her lap and tells him that Frank cried the first time, too. He says that doesn’t count because Frank had been eleven and he’s thirteen. Frank’s had also bled a lot.

“What if I told you that I cried too?” she says, smiling for some reason.

Harry eyes her dubiously and asks her how old she had been then. She tells him she was fifteen and he still has to think about it. He thinks Dad or Frank might say something about how girls are supposed to cry about things and boys aren’t, but last time Dad said something like that she’d smacked him so hard his cheek had been red all the way until Harry had come home from school the next day. And he’s pretty sure he’s seen Dad get upset a lot more than Mom, so he nods and decides that he does feel a little better.

Harry isn’t allowed out on his own until he’s almost fourteen, which seems to fit everything else in the pattern of Frank getting to do things before him. He doesn’t waste any time in finding somewhere else to be, somewhere a lot quieter.

He quickly finds that he likes the forest, he likes the nature and the animals and the silence. He spends his days hiking, going as far as he can until it starts getting dark and he has to go back home. Frank’s usually out of the house too, hanging out with his friends, and they usually get home about the same time if Frank comes home at all.

In high school, Harry joins the football team and it’s made up almost entirely of people he’s known for a while and played with, from when a bunch of the boys around his age would all gather out in the field not far from his house and do their best to recreate a real football game.

He ends up getting pretty close to some of them, like Ed Hurley who’s been in all his classes since the second grade and Hawk who he has history with this year and Hank Jennings who’s one of Frank’s friends.

After practice, they always go to the Double R Diner. It’s only partly to hassle Hank while he’s working. They get their rootbeers and probably just a little too much food. Harry thinks he should probably get a job too since Frank’s had one down at the general store for a while now.

Harry does end up getting a job at Ed’s dad’s gas station, Ed's Gas Farm, and when he tells Dad the response he gets is a grunt of, “It’s about time.” 

When he’s sixteen, towards the beginning of eleventh grade, he gets hurt during a game. It’s not so unusual, they all get headaches and a little dizzy sometimes, but this is like... he can’t even really describe it because it’s all just so foggy and painful and Dad’s yelling at him while he holds himself up against the wall at home. They lost the game because of him, and that’s bad. Really bad.

He can’t play for the rest of the year and thinks that might be for the best. He doesn’t think he even likes football.

Harry doesn’t really have any plans for his life, can’t really think of anything he really wants to do. When he’s in his senior year of high school, he sits himself down and thinks about it long and hard since everyone’s talking about college. He comes up with nothing.

Mom tells him to think about the things he likes, but that isn’t all that helpful because he can’t make a living off of animals or trees or being alone. Maybe with hunting or fishing, but there’s no degree for that. He thinks about doing what he does most of the time and just following what Frank does (and, ultimately, what their dad had done), but Frank’s off in Vietnam (just like Dad had gone to Korea) and Harry really, _really_ doesn’t want to do that. 

Instead, he ends up doing what Mom did and goes to Washington State University out in Pullman. He knows he’ll be back in Twin Peaks like he’d never left once he graduates and will probably start working under Dad at the Sheriff’s Department until he retires and Frank takes his place. Because, really, that’s obviously what’s going to happen.

Honestly, he’s not even really sure what degree he’s working for. Just whatever his advisor had suggested, since he doesn’t have any better ideas. 

He has a girlfriend, Nancy, for a while, but it doesn’t last very long. Sometimes, Harry thinks about when he was in high school, when his friends would talk about girls and he’d have nothing to contribute. He’d watch Hank working his Double R shift and wonder if he’d ever find a girl he likes the same way Ed likes Norma and Hawk like Julie from math class. He’s pretty sure Nancy isn’t that girl.

When Harry is nineteen, Mom is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and she dies only six months later. The funeral is fucking horrible, with Frank standing all still in his uniform and Dad drinking from a flask and yelling at just about everyone and everything. Frank says something before she’s buried, something thoughtful that makes most of the people there cry, but Harry doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything the whole time, unable to unlock his jaw, and doesn’t think he could even if he’d thought long and hard and prepared something.

Harry doesn’t cry until he’s in his car, driving Dad home because he’s too drunk to drive himself and Frank has to get to the airport. Dad calls him a weak, emotional pansy and Harry can’t even respond, but he’s filled with so much anger and confusion about how he could say something like that when _Mom’s dead_.

He’s supposed to stay in town for a while longer, another night or two, but when he gets to the house, he waits for Dad to get out and then turns the car back on and drives those three and half hours back to his dormitory without stopping.

When Harry graduates, he moves back to Twin Peaks, like he always knew he would. Dad’s retired at this point and Frank’s the sheriff now. He hires Harry as a deputy and exactly no one is surprised. This is how it was always going to be, no matter what.

Harry’s thirty-one when Frank resigns. He moves away to take care of Dad, who’d left a few years back. Harry’s made sheriff and, again, no one’s surprised.

He doesn’t think he ever changes. He doesn’t think he ever _will_ change. Forever, Harry Truman is just whatever his brother and his father, and one time his mother, did before him. He probably won’t leave Twin Peaks, he loves it, afterall, but he’ll always be trying to be as good as Frank, to live up to what his Mom wanted and his Dad demands of him. Just like in school, he’s never someone’s first choice (except, sometimes he is now, since he’s sheriff and it kind of has to be him, but even then he knows they’d prefer Frank, so is he even really a first choice there?).

Josie Packard asks Harry out when he’s thirty-seven. He thinks it must be some kind of grief response because her husband’s just died and what would a lady like her want with him, anyway? She seems sincere, though, so he accepts.

Their relationship is secret and that’s fine. Josie is beautiful and sweet and he likes her. Yeah, he likes her.

Harry’s thirty-eight, almost thirty-nine, when Laura Palmer is murdered. 

He’s never met anyone like Special Agent Dale Cooper, who delightedly asks him about the Douglas firs one minute and for the coroner’s report the next. He smiles a lot and enthuses about the little things and probably drinks too much coffee. He pinches Harry’s nose for some reason and Harry can’t help laughing because he’s never felt so warm in his life.

No, he’s never met anyone like Coop before and, despite all the shit that happens, Harry can’t stop thinking about how they just snap together like magnets. Or puzzle pieces. When Harry’s with Coop he finds that sound isn’t so bad. He talks almost constantly and Harry is more than happy to listen.

Harry has never felt more like himself than he has with Coop.


End file.
